The geothermal plant construction will require drilling of twenty-two wells. Through those, hot water from volcanic rocks will be supplied to a separator, where it will fall into steam and water. The steam will then be fed to two turbines with a total capacity of 220 megawatts (MW), and water will be pumped back into the rock. The power plant will generate 1,730 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity per year, equivalent to 0.5% of Indonesia’s power demand. The public grid PT PLN (Persero) will purchase generated electricity for thirty years at a price of $0.094 per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is comparable to the cost of electricity for industrial consumers in the United States ($0.086 per kWh, according to the US Department of Energy).
According to Ember, in 2021, the share of geothermal sources in Indonesian power generation structure was 5.2% (while coal, gas and oil products accounted for 81.8%, and all other sources, for 13%). Geothermal electricity is generated by 31 turbines with a total capacity of 2,074 MW. Indonesia ranks second in the world in terms of total geothermal capacity, surpassed only by the United States (2,762 MW). In its turn, it surpasses Philippines (1,590 GW), New Zealand (926 MW) and 13 other countries, including Iceland (733 MW).
According to Global Energy Monitor, by January 2023 the global capacity of existing geothermal plants reached 11,786 MW, and the capacity of the plants under construction, 843 MW. In the coming years, the development of this energy sector will be driven by the use of technologies in the oil and gas industry, including horizontal drilling and distributed fiber optic sensing, which makes it possible to obtain information about underground soil layers. American Fervo Energy will apply these technologies in the construction of geothermal stations in Utah and Nevada, where geysers lie at depths exceeding 6 km.
